


Partners

by cannedpeaches



Series: All Roads Lead Me to This Place [6]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:25:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5823247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannedpeaches/pseuds/cannedpeaches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Joel and Tess fought alongside one another, and one time they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

> A departure from my frothy, fluffy fic, but I felt like I had to write it. I'm pretty sleep-deprived, so please let me know if you spot any typos.

i.

It was just her luck that the new guy’s first day on the job, the drop would go horribly wrong.

They were two blocks from one of Tess’s safehouses, their packs stuffed with ration cards and merchandise, when they were ambushed. A group of Cillian’s thugs poured from an alleyway as Tess and Joel approached, weapons out.

Tess sprinted for a long-abandoned car that was parked across the street. “Cover me!” she called to Joel. As she rolled onto the car’s hood and began to roll across it, however, a searing pain tore through her shoulder. She hit the ground hard on the other side. When she put her hand to her shoulder, it came away bloody.

Joel was right behind her, and she only had a few seconds to back up before he, too, fell to the ground next to her.

“Fuck,” she spat as he righted himself. He stuck his head out from behind the car and popped off a few rounds at the men across the street. “What part of ‘cover me’ did you not understand?”

“There’s five of them and one of me, boss,” Joel said, his eyes never leaving the men shooting at them.

“Yeah, well, you forget that if I get my head blown off, you’re out of a job.” Tess pulled her pistol from her waistband and moved down to the back of the car. The thugs hadn’t been expecting her to turn up there; she managed to hit two of them before ducking behind cover again.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Joel said. With that, he stood, and fired three perfect headshots. Tess would never admit it to him, but he was a better shot that she would ever be. It was part of the reason why she’d hired him.

That, and the last time she and her men had gotten ambushed, she’d lost all her men.

“Cut the crap,” she said, standing, her shoulder still screaming at her. “Let’s get a move on, Texas.”

 

ii.

It was years before she stopped to think about what a miracle the two of them were.

When she bothered to remember, she thought back to one job, three months into Joel’s employment, when they had run into a pack of clickers after meeting Bill outside the QZ.

She often imagined dying in just this way: Clickers, their hands tearing at her limbs, their broken teeth razor-sharp against her neck, pulling away the flesh from the bone, turning her into nothing. Every time she saw them, she felt hot panic wash through her.

But Joel was unflappable. He stood back-to-back with her, his hands sure and steady around his pistol as he shot off round after round. They circled each other, eyes only on the monsters, covering each other nonetheless, keeping each other safe.

If Tess were a more poetic woman, she would have said it had been like dancing.

In the end, they were surrounded only by the dead bodies of infected, their ammo spent, their lives saved.

 

iii.

Tess pounded on his apartment door for so long that later, she would see that she’d bruised the side of her hand.

“C’mon, Texas,” she shouted through the already-battered wood. “Open the fuck up. I know you’re in there.”

She heard Joel shuffling toward the door, slowly undoing the locks. When he finally opened it, Tess couldn’t stop herself from taking a step back.

“You look like shit,” she said, her anger almost forgotten at the sight of his bloodshot eyes, his messy hair, his unwashed clothes.

Joel only grunted.

“Well, are you gonna let me in?” Tess asked, her annoyance with him rising again.

Joel wordlessly took a step back. As he shut the door and locked it back up, Tess said, “Where the fuck were you yesterday? We had a drop to make.”

Joel said nothing, just leaned against the door and stared at his feet, his arms crossed.

“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment right now?” Tess said, her voice rising with her frustration. “You need to start remember who’s the boss here.” She stalked around his living room, her eyes falling on the mostly empty bottle of whiskey sitting on his couch. She gestured to it. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I ain’t,” Joel said. He still wouldn’t look at her.

“You’re telling me that you were getting shitty while I got cornered by a bunch of assholes trying to make off with our product?” Tess was shouting in earnest now. She was ready to shove him, to slug him, to hurt him just to get him to explain to her.

But then, he said, “What day is it, Tess?”

“What?” Her confusion almost derailed her anger again.

“What day is it?” he repeated.

“It’s Wednesday. The twenty-seventh...” She trailed off, goosebumps rising on her skin. A sliver of ice slashed its way through her chest, and it had nothing to do with the September chill. “Oh, Joel.”

She went to him, began to reach out, her fingertips just brushing his elbow. He finally looked up at her, his red eyes shiny.

“I forgot,” she whispered. He had told her once, months ago, when he was so drunk he barely knew what he was saying. Barely remembered telling her the next morning.

But she couldn’t forget. Or so she had thought.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping closer to him, the way you would a wounded, wild animal. She put her hand on his cheek, and he flinched, but he didn’t move away. “I don’t know how I forgot...”

He leaned into her cheek, grabbed her hand and kissed her palm before pulling her closer. Tess’s chest filled with an emotion she was too afraid to name.

Instead, she said, “So, _now_ you want some company?” She could have kicked herself for saying those words, but Joel responded by covering her mouth with his.

Later, afterwards, as they lay in his bed, trying to catch their breath, he would pull her to his chest and clutch her. Like she was water, ready to slip out of his grip at any moment’s notice.

As his breathing slowed, she murmured, “I’m not going anywhere.” His only reaction was to hold her more tightly.

 

iv.

“Fold,” Tess said, disgusted. She threw her cards down on the dinner table.

Joel, who was sitting across from her, chuckled. “Pay up, girl.”

Tess snarled at him, but all the same, she unhooked her bra and threw it across the table. Joel gave her that half-smile that always sent butterflies racing through her stomach as he flopped the bra over his bare shoulder.

“That’s cheating,” Tess said. She stretched, arching her back, watching Joel’s hungry eyes strafe over her chest. “No covering up.”

He tossed the bra on the floor and brought the bottle of bourbon sitting on the table to his lips. “You’re runnin’ out of things to bargain with.”

Tess arched an eyebrow at him. “Never count me out.” She leaned over the table, pushing her breasts together with her arms, framing them, in plain sight.

Joel gave her a knowing look. He was familiar with all her tricks, she knew -- but that didn’t stop him from falling for them every time.

“Never do, darlin’.”

 

v. 

In the twelve years Tess had known Joel, he had never looked at another woman.

That was probably an exaggeration, she allowed; a man like Joel attracted a lot of attention, and being that he was a man, she knew he noticed. But when he wanted to fuck, he came only to her; it was as close to a relationship as either of then had had in a long, long time. And in this world, twelve years was an eternity.

So, it was twelve years of monogamous fucking.

Twelve years of never speaking about said monogamous fucking, about what more might lie between them, always threatening to surface when they fought their way out of a tough situation, when they fought with each other, when either one of them “accidentally” stayed over at the other’s apartment for too long, missing curfew, having to sleep over. When no sleep happened on any of those nights.

Twelve years of blowing off Malick and his lucrative boxing ring, his requests that she, with her business acumen, help him manage it. His promises that he would take care of her with all his profits, as much as he could given the circumstances.

As if she needed to be taken care of. Joel, unlike Malick, knew that she didn’t.

After twelve years, Tess figured they’d long come to an understanding. So when Joel began to suggest they settle down, she was floored.

“I didn’t _say_ ‘settle down,’“ Joel protested the first time he mentioned it, the first time they fought about it. They had been at her apartment, taking inventory, when, out of the blue, he had suggested that with all their supplies, they could think about lying low for a while. Tess had snapped at the very thought.

“No, but that’s what you _meant_ ,” Tess said. She turned from her kitchen counter, stacked with ration cards, bottles of pills, and boxes of ammo, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him.

“How’re you supposed to know what I mean when you won’t let me talk?” Joel crossed his arms over his chest like his muscles were armor.

“I don’t need to hear you talk to know what you mean,” Tess said. “We can’t quit now. The second I go underground is the second everything goes to shit. I can’t keep running this business if people think I’m soft.”

Joel snorted. “No one’s gonna think you’re soft if they don’t see you for a week.”

“You have no idea how hard I’ve worked,” she said, punctuating each word with a jab to his chest. He stiffed under her touch. “No idea how long it took me to make people take me seriously. I’m not going to just throw that out the window because you want to settle the fuck down. I’m not that kind of girl and you know it.”

She could tell Joel was fighting to keep his face even, to show nothing. He was failing. The pain hovering beneath the surface was like a knife in her, but she couldn’t stop herself.

“If you want me to just sit around and play housewife --”

“Jesus Christ, Tess, I didn’t say anythin’ like that!”

She should be afraid, she knew, of him in this moment, because the only times he lost his cool was when they were in a fight, when he he was punching the breath out of someone trying to hurt her. When he grabbed their heads and twisted their necks at unnatural angles, when he unleashed all his fury into their bodies. When he broke people.

But she pushed him, because his anger meant he felt something for her, something she’d never been sure he did, and she was flattered. She was proud.

“You didn’t say it, but you’d like it, wouldn’t you?” Her voice was lower now. Dangerous, to match his louder tone. “You think you’d like us to be normal, to live honest lives, to get real jobs and go about our business and be law-abiding citizens. Well guess what, Joel? That’s how we’d starve. That’s how we’d die. And you’d get bored after a while. You know it. The adrenaline’s the only thing that keeps you around.” She risked taking a step closer to him. His eyes were dark, and they held hers like a black hole. “The adrenaline, and the fact that I’m easy pickings whenever you want some. Isn’t that right, Joel?”

The words tumbled out of her, venomous. She knew they weren’t completely true, but they were true enough. By the way Joel was looking at her, she knew that he knew it, too.

Without a word, Joel picked up his pack and left, slamming her door behind him. He wouldn’t speak to her for weeks, and by the time he would, by the time she showed up at his apartment, battered and bruised, needing him -- to get Robert, to fill her lonely hours, to _breathe_ \-- it was too late.

Later, toward the end, she knew the truth: She had always pushed him too far, and she had ended up pushing her one good thing away.

 

-

“Come on,” she said. “Make this easy for me.” She hated how she had to beg now, this would be his last memory of her. But she had no choice; they were coming.

The look on his face was one she had never seen before. She wondered if he had looked this wounded, this lost, this _broken_ just after Sarah died. She didn’t have time to ask. She didn’t have time for a lot of things. Neither of them did.

“I can fight,” he said, his voice breaking.

“No, just go,” she said, shoving him toward the back of the building. It would be his only chance. “Just fucking go.”

She watched him back away, looked at him for as long as she could, committed his face to memory. Every line, every scar.

As she turned to face the door, positioning herself, she thought about him. About his last look at her, about his face when he was angry, when he laughed, when he pressed his forehead to hers when he was inside of her, his eyes closed, as if he were in pain, as if he were in rapture.

As if he were in love.

She shook her head slightly. The door was giving way.

Love. Had there ever been such a thing?

She didn’t have time to doubt it or to confirm with herself that yes, that was what it had been all along. The bullets were tearing through her body.

If love had ever existed between them, well, it was over now.


End file.
